Bloggers as video censors?
p2pnet.net News:- A US senator wants to turn blog owners into a web of online video censors.
“Millions of commercial Web sites and personal blogs would be required to report illegal images or videos posted by their users or pay fines of up to $300,000, if a new proposal in the U.S. Senate came into law,” says CNET News.
Behind it is senator John McCain, says the story, going on:
“The legislation, drafted by Sen. John McCain and obtained by CNET News.com, would also require Web sites that offer user profiles to delete pages posted by sex offenders.”
Technology has, “contributed to the greater distribution and availability, and, some believe, desire for child pornography,” McCain said a speech to the Senate, according to the story, which goes on:
“After child pornography or some forms of ‘obscenity’ are found and reported, the Web site must retain any ‘information relating to the facts or circumstances’ of the incident for at least six months. Webmasters would be immune from civil and criminal liability if they followed the specified procedures exactly.”
McCain’s Stop the Online Exploitation of Our Children Act would call for reports to be submitted to the National Center for Missing and Exploited Children, “which in turn will forward to the relevant police agency”.
“Internet service providers already must follow those reporting requirements,” says CNET, “But McCain’s proposal is liable to be controversial because it levies the same regulatory scheme – and even stiffer penalties – on even individual bloggers who offer discussion areas on their Web sites.”
A McCain aide said any Web site, “you’d have to join up or become a member of to use” would fall within the Net net.
No payment would be necessary to qualify.
In Canada, proposals to use ISPs as kiddie porn censors is meeting with opposition.
If your Net access is blocked by government restrictions, try Psiphon from the Citizen Lab at the University of Toronto’s Munk Centre for International Studies. Go here for the official download, here for the p2pnet download, and here for details. And if you’re Chinese and you’re looking for a way to access independent Internet news sources, try Freegate, the DIT program written to help Chinese citizens circumvent web site blocking outside of China. Download it here.
Also See:
CNET News – Senator: Illegal images must be reported, December 8, 2006
meeting with opposition – Blocking online kiddie porn, December 5, 2006
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December 11th, 2006 at 3:18 pm
i think i speak for the majority of the internet community when i say that this legislation is unnessisary… i’m sure the vast majority of website owners, myself included would report and forward evidance of this nature to authorities without the burden of fines hanging us, should it occur on sites we run.
December 13th, 2006 at 3:49 am
What the hell is with this huge blanket ban on sex offenders being allowed to exist online at all? This sex offender hysteria is SEVERELY getting out of control. “Sex offender” tags so many classes of crime, and statistics from the Department of Justice itself show that anyone carrying the label “sex offender” is the LEAST likely class of criminal to commit a new sex offense.
That part should be destroyable on constitutional grounds. This blocks freedoms of online speech. Think about it. By the definition ‘any Web site, “you’d have to join up or become a member of to use” would fall within the Net net’ you’re blocking anyone tagged (correctly or otherwise) as “Sex Offender!” from having their own E-mail account, having a MySpace account, having a LiveJournal account, a Blogspot account, an IM account…pretty much preventing sex offenders from communicating with ANYONE through the Internet.
Every sex offender law on the books should be scrapped. The only way to 100% guarantee your child won’t be a sex crime victim is to lock EVERYONE up, and because that isn’t practical, the only remaining practical way is the one that should be getting executed all along: take some fucking responsibility for the upbringing you give your children and teach them what to look out for!
Child protectionism is the wedge that is being slowly bashed into the log of freedom.